At the risk of neatly tucking myself into a box labeled Millennial You’ve Read About, I admit that I sleep on a Casper mattress, use Dollar Shave Club razors, and sometimes wear Warby Parker glasses. These direct-to-consumer brands didn’t even exist a decade ago, when someone like me might have defaulted to legacy names like Serta Simmons, Gillette, and Lenscrafters. More and more (typically younger) people shop without showing loyalty to long-established brands. Gone is the widespread sense that I should trust my teeth to Crest; a startup toothpaste subscription service works just fine. This dynamic has been labeled a “disruption.” But it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Loyalty does not follow from the logic of capitalism.
Somewhere around the turn of the 20th century, William Leach writes, companies began to conceive of a human being as an “animal governed by an infinity of desires.” This concept of humanity argues that to be truly human is to “quest after the new,” “violate boundaries,” and hate “the old and the habitual.” This view of the self posits that “people have no basic commitment to anything except what is coming next and can be encouraged and seduced—without much ado—to change their minds and habits.”
If a generation shrugs while traditional retail crumbles, it’s because capitalism coached us so well.
I don’t want to end on that cynical note. I think Leach is absolutely right when he says this conception of the self rejects what is so “human” about human beings, namely:
their ability to commit themselves, to establish binding relationships, to sink permanent roots, to maintain continuity with previous generations, to remember, to make ethical judgments, to seek pleasure in work, to remain steadfast on behalf of principle and loyal to community or country … to seek spiritual transcendence beyond the self, and to fight a cause through to the end.
This may sound gooey but if there’s anything to take away from this newsletter, it’s the encouragement to be truly human, to pursue things that last.
I type this while sitting on a bed I purchased after hearing about it on a Spotify commercial, so what do I know.
“The Communal Mind” by Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books
This experimental essay is a wild tour of the Internet and reads like a surreal diary entry. The result is more effective than ten straightforward thinkpieces written about social media, outrage culture, and being online. It’s well worth your time (you can also watch it; the essay was originally delivered as a lecture at the British Museum).
“Death to Minimalism” by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs
This piece takes dead aim at the tidy minimalist aesthetic and helps us get a better sense of the qualities that give a place life and soul. Beauty is hard to define; we know it when we see it.
I own midcentury modern furniture and enjoy the sights in Copenhagen, so maybe I’m a hypocrite for nodding in agreement throughout Robinson’s piece.
“AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld” by Kevin Kelly, Wired
Augmented Reality is on its way to ubiquity. If you don’t know what AR is, picture Pokemon Go. If that’s unhelpful, picture digital things layered over the physical world that you can see when you look through a screen or special glasses. Soon “Mirrorworld” (as Kelly calls it) will become commonplace.
“How Tech Utopia Fostered Tyranny” by Jon Askonas, The New Atlantis
We’re well aware of the negative consequences unleashed by Facebook and other platforms. But the founders of these companies aren’t villains with tented fingers who seek global destruction. They are motivated by their rosy vision of humanity, convinced their tech could unlock happiness and usher in our utopian destiny. Well-meaning, but dangerously misguided.
THANKS FOR READING HALGORITHM!
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